Great project ... This is exactly what I was looking for. Order with PCB and elektronic parts in progress... I have one question about reader ... You said i can connect PC to reader and communicate via Serial Port... It's possible the same with Raspberry Pi ? I want to have access to my ROMs in Raspberry and run in RetroPie....

Maybe some of you have already tried?

What already works is controlling the Cart Reader over serial but it still saves the rom to the SD card and you won't have any access to the SD card from the Raspberry Pi.You would need to rewrite the code to send the rom over serial instead and then write an application for the Raspberry Pi to receive the serial bytes and store it as a file.

I was originally going to make the reader as small as possible but then I decided that I wanted a large display for my tired old eyes. The reader uses a RobotDyn MEGA 2560 PRO Embed connected to multiple Adafruit modules. The Adafruit parts are the 2.2" TFT LCD with microSD, the Si5351 Clock Generator, and the PowerBoost 1000C. The portable power is supplied by a LiPo battery that sits behind the LCD and controlled by the PowerBoost 1000C.

I've assembled an acrylic case for the reader but I need to modify it for a better fit. I'd also like to redesign the case from a simple box into something sleeker and more stylish. When I finalize the case, then I'll post some pics.

Regarding my portable SNES reader, I added Japanese support using the Genitop GT20L16J1Y FontROM chip. It uses SPI and integrates seamlessly with the Adafruit GFX library.

With the available code/library, Zenkaku works perfectly but Hankaku needs some tweaking. SFC carts only use JIS X 201 Hankaku but the FontROM uses a different ASCII map. I need to figure out how to map the JIS X 201 codes to the FontROM ASCII or JIS X 208 tables. BTW, Zenkaku appears to only be used by some Satellaview ROMs.

I'll need to change my board layout to add the FontROM chip and some additional components as it uses 3.3V.

- The "8bit Flash" pinout is for flashroms like 29F016, 29F032 and 29F033. Choose "8bit adapter" in the flash menu.- The "16bit Flash" and "16bit Flash in 8bit Mode" pinouts are for flashroms like 29F1610, 29L3211 and 29LV160.

The difference between "16bit Flash" and "16bit Flash in 8bit Mode" is that the first transfers one word(=two bytes) at a time and the second one transfers just one byte.In the Cart Reader flash menu you choose "16bit adapter" if you wired the flashrom according to the "16bit Flash" pinout. And you choose "8bit adapter" if you wired the flashrom according to the "16bit Flash in 8bit Mode" pinout.It does not matter in which mode the flashrom is flashed as long as you wired it up correctly for that mode.

Ofc all this information is only needed if you handwire everything, if you order the PCBs then everything is already correctly wired. With the PCBs you always choose "8bit mode" if you're using this adapter:

(8bit adapter PCB wired according to the "16bit Flash in 8bit Mode" pinout)

And you only choose "16bit mode" when the PCB actually has 16bit printed on itself.

(16bit adapter PCB wired according to the "16bit Flash" pinout)

So you need to wire your 29L3211 either like the "16bit Flash" pinout and select "16bit adapter" in the flashrom menu or wire it up like the "16bit Flash in 8bit Mode" pinout and select "8bit adapter" in the flashrom menu.

You probably wired the 29L3211 like the "8bit Flash" pinout and that's why it won't work. The 29L3211 is a 16bit flashrom and it needs to be wired either following the "16bit Flash" pinout or the "16bit Flash in 8bit Mode" pinout.

You don't need to, the only change is that the byte pin is now tied to GND for 8bit programming but if you use the 8bit flash adapter PCBs the byte pin is already grounded there. So it only makes a difference if you hand wire your own flash adapters.

Off topic I know but are the TL866's able to write to 29LV160? I've been googling and it seems like a lot of people say no they can't but then every now and then I'll find a forum post where someone claims it works great.

I have a TL866 but I don't have the adapter for the 29LV160 so I've never even tried.

I finished off the Japanese font support using the GT20L16J1Y FontROM chip.

I've got the FontROM chip wired direct to the MEGA's SPI pins on my prototype board. It works but I made a modified board layout with the proper components to make the SPI connections at 3.3V.

Now that it has been completed, I'm not sure what the point of implementing the FontROM chip was other than to see if it could be done. Basically, it only displays the Japanese Hankaku/Zenkaku title when showing the cart details. Not really useful.

Maybe the FontROM chip would be useful to display the reader menu in Japanese but that isn't something that I'd work on.

I'm having some difficulty programming the PIC12F62 I tried the "homemade" PIC flasher and also a PICKit 3 without success. Are there any tricks to flashing it? Or is anyone willing to sell one or two pre-flashed?